How to Fix Broken or Missing Icons and Thumbnails in Windows 10

One of the common “it’s still Windows” chores we have to do every now and then is reset the icon and thumbnail cache. If your icons are corrupted in some way—blank, taken over by another app or not displaying as they normally do—then resetting the icon cache can fix the problem.

The same goes for the thumbnail cache, which keeps a preview of images, videos, and documents. There are several ways to do this. The most common involves using the command line. Or you can use a free third party utility. We’ll look at both options.

Reset the Icon and Thumbnail Caches

If your icons are corrupted or not displaying properly, you can reset the Windows 10 icon cache to fix them.

The easiest way to do it is using the free Winaero Tweaker utility. This free utility provides an assortment of options for fixing common problems users will experience in Windows 10 from time to time. It’s just a 2 MB download, too. After downloading, extract the winaerotweaker.zip file, then launch the Winaero Tweaker setup file, click Next, choose Normal mode and accept the license agreement.

Fix Icons and Thumbnails from Run or Command Prompt

If you don’t want to go through a third party app, you can try resetting a number of ways. From the run command, type: ie4uinit -show then hit Enter.

Still not seeing those icons? Then let’s jump into the command line and get our hands dirty. First, you will need to disable Explorer.exe. Press Windows key + X then click Task Manager (or press Control + Shift + Esc). FRom the Processes tab, select Windows Explorer, right-click it then click End task.

Click File > Run new task, type: CMD, hold down the Shift key then click OK. This will open the command prompt with administrator privileges.

Type each command then hit Enter.

cd %homepath%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer

dir iconcache*

del iconcache*

dir iconcache*

Type explorer.exe to restart Windows Explorer.

Exit the command prompt then verify your icons are working again.

Reset Your Thumbnail Cache

A similar issue can happen when your thumbnail previews. Instead of seeing a preview of your actual image, video or document, you may only see a generic icon.

Fixing this one should be a lot easier. Press Windows key + R, type: cleanmgr.exe then hit Enter. Scroll down then check the box next to Thumbnails then click OK.

So, those are your options if your icons ever start misbehaving. Let us know which method you prefer using.

6 Comments

6 Comments

ben e. mccoy

THANK YOU, Andre, for this most valuable tool. I’ve always had to reboot Windows in order to recover missing/corrupted icons on task bar, so i hope your fix-it program will help solve this recurrent problem.

SEEMS TO WORK out well at my end, fixed up and reset my task bar icons A-OK.
and the rest of your Winaero Tweaker Utility looks real interesting for all sorts
of past technical problems i’ve experienced with Windows 10!!!

An unwanted search banner installed itself at the top of the screen. I can close it cannot uninstall it.
Also, the site directed me to sites requiring payment. This all feels like a trap door to old fashioned online crap-marketing. I trusted you, help me get this thing off my PC…